yeah this annoys me on CoH, you join a 'Noobs Only' game and the host and his freinds are like 30 ranks ahead of you.
You guys can check the rank of other people in the lobby in CoH though, i just avoid the con artists who wait for a real noob who joins their 'noob only' game and the noob cant tell their rank so he starts and gets slaughtered.
It doesnt make sense to me, winning a 4 hour long RTS game like CoH online, having such a battle that when you come away from your PC you feel a bit buzzed and you actually have sweat on your body from exertion is a real game, but obliterating a lvl.1 in 10-20 minutes doesn't seem much like a game to me.
The problem is that real noobs are hard to find in a game that's been out as long as this.